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Montanaro accepts call to serve as CEO of Jamba

Former Nokia exec joins venture

Jamba, the mobile joint venture between News Corp. and VeriSign, has tapped former Nokia executive Mauro Montanaro as CEO.

Montanaro replaces president and CEO Lucy Hood, the influential mobile executive who resigned in October. Jamba COO Lee Fenton had been acting as interim CEO.

Fenton will continue in his role as COO and work closely with Montanaro, who will start Monday and report to Jamba's board of directors.

Montanaro had been at Nokia since 1996 and most recently was vp sales, customer and market operations for the Southeast Asia-Pacific region, where he supervised handset sales and channel development for 16 countries. He had held the positions of director of the imaging business unit and vp sales and channel management for the multimedia business group at Nokia.

"Mauro's considerable experience in developing mobile content channels and services will be a huge asset as Jamba continues to expand its reach and offering," News Corp. president and COO Peter Chernin said Tuesday.

Jamba serves 35 territories around the world and contains the assets of Fox Mobile Entertainment.